December 3, 2002, 9:45 PM PST (FTW) -- I just
picked up the following story from the net.

Thus far the Homeland Security, mass vaccination, biowarfare
and Iraqi war issues have been running on parallel tracks.
This story joins them together. While I personally believe
it unlikely that Saddam actually has or will use these
viruses I also think it extremely likely that the more
Draconian measures on the drawing board for repression
here at home have now been placed in the starting blocks.
By all reckoning - after the unexpected delays in the
Iraqi invasion plan that were caused by successful politicking
at the UN - FTW now expects that the invasion will begin
on the next new moon cycle around January 2nd.

Although the story indicates that Hussein might be able
to deliver the virus via Scud missile - an implied direct
threat to Israel - he is also equally certain of immediately
devastating and possibly nuclear retaliation. He would
unleash a whirlwind he could never hope to survive and
Saddam Hussein is first and foremost a survivor. Bioweapons,
if he has them, are a zero-sum game for him.

Rather than fear what we will be told is a heinous plot
by Saddam to kill us all, we should be more afraid of
the well-planned dark night of tyranny, death and suffering
that is about to descend all over the globe. This story
and the linkage that it represents are the ringing of
the doorbell from an uninvited visitor who plans to steal
away with whatever vestiges of civil liberty remain in
this country.

I leave Friday for a week of business in the Dominican
Republic. I hope that things will not have changed too
much on my return and that I will have time to finish
writing my book "Across the Rubicon" in time to see it
published. I have said for a year that the Empire is many
steps ahead of those who are futilely trying to organize
protests, coalitions and house parties. To my way of thinking
there is only one weapon available to the American people
if they will but use it. That weapon is their wallet.

Massive national boycotts of all products associated
with AOL/Time Warner, Lockheed, Citigroup, ABC, Disney,
Microsoft, Viacom, The New York Times, The Tribune Company,
The Washington Post, General Electric, Halliburton, and
the pharmaceutical companies will have an immediate impact.
But the boycotts and the refusal to feed this corporate
structure must be national in scope and occur at the height
of the Christmas shopping season. I am not hopeful because
even though they are awakening, the American people have
not yet grasped how far the tyranny has progressed.

Americans must break themselves of consumerism and the
belief that they "must" have products that keep this machine
running. If they are unable to muster this will now, they
will soon be doing without things of much greater importance
- things which are irreplaceable from the neighborhood
store.

American intelligence officials
are investigating whether a Russian scientist transferred
a particularly lethal strain of smallpox to the government
of Iraq in the 1990s, ABCNEWS has confirmed.

As first reported in The
New York Times, the allegations involve a smallpox strain
stored at the Research Institute for Viral Preparations
in Moscow.

Intelligence officials say
an informant has reported the institute's late director,
virologist Nelja Maltseva, moved the smallpox on a trip
to Iraq in 1990.

"Maltseva had access
to the entire collection, in all probability, of the Russian
strains of small pox - at least a hundred," said
Dr. Alan Selikoff, a scientist at the Sandia National
Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.

The collection includes an
especially deadly strain of smallpox involved in an outbreak
30 years ago in the remote Kazakhstan city of Aralsk.

Selikoff, who first revealed
the Aralsk outbreak earlier this year, says it's possible
that strain is also resistant to known vaccines. Even
if a vaccine were available, it would not stop the spread
of this rare strain of smallpox, but Selikoff said it
would help limit the number of deaths.

"It raises the specter
of the transfer of the disease to the Iraqi government
that might cause more problems than the garden-variety
smallpox would if it were ever introduced into the open
again," said Selikoff.

Concern of Possible
AttackIn fact, Selikoff's research suggests the
Aralsk smallpox strain could be easily spread by missile,
in the air across wide areas - something not previously
thought possible.

"Smallpox in the hands
of Saddam Hussein is a great concern and obviously a more
virulent strain is of even more concern," Rep. Chris
Shays, D-Conn., told ABCNEWS.

In the last few months, Israeli
officials and emergency workers have begun a rush smallpox
vaccination program, based on fears they are in the range
of Iraqi Scud missiles.

In the United States, government
scientists say the new allegations involving Iraq and
smallpox raise the stakes for President Bush, who must
soon decide on the scale of a smallpox vaccination program
here.

A federal plan being considered
would offer the inoculation first to emergency workers,
who would be most likely to come in contact with a contagious
smallpox patient.

Florida's Orange County Sheriff's
Office is the first law-enforcement agency in the United
States to offer all of its deputies the opportunity to
be vaccinated against smallpox.